Annotation:Devil or No Devil

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DEVIL OR NO DEVIL. AKA - "Devil and no Devil." English, Jig. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody first appears in J. Wilson's The Pocket Preceptor for the Fife (London, 1805), followed by J. Hewitt's Fashionable Repertory of Country Dances and Waltzes (New York, 1807-1810, with an alternate title of "Devil in Ireland"). It later appeared in dancing master Thomas Wilson's Companion to the Ball Room (London, 1816). American musician Abel Shattuck (1759-1816, Colrain, Mass.) entered it into his music manuscript copybook, which he began around 1801.

The Devil takes the fiddler.

A different, duple-time, tune of the same name was printed by John and Michael Paff in their Four New Country Dances in New York in 1799.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Kennedy (Jigs & Quicksteps, Trips & Humours), 1997; No. 26, p. 8. Wilson (Companion to the Ball Room), 1816; p. 126.

Recorded sources:

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